The Practice of Bloodletting
by M Penchant
Summary: Angsty and drawnout look at Jim postCasino Night, from his roommate's perspective. I apologize to those who took the time to review it, but I modified for accuracy. Reviews are welcome! Also, some violence and coarse language.


**Disclaimer: I don't own anything, or have the rights to anything.**

**Author's note: This is an odd peek into the relationship of Jim and his roommate Mark. I know that I'll probably offend some readers with what may seem to be incongruent actions on Jim's part, but feel free to let me know if you think I did or did not pull it off. Also, I got reviews from the previous posting of it (I've had to make a correction on his roommate's name) and they indicated that a certain aspect of it seems to be "from out of nowhere." I didn't want to change the story, but consider that 'to know Jim is to love Jim', and that maybe his roommate is doing more than helping him.**

"I don't like to leave things behind," Jim said while he packed up his loose ends in the kitchen. I'm no stranger to his presuppositional statements. By 'presuppositional', I mean that he _supposes _that he might someday hold that opinion. He says things like that to me, with his wistful voice sounding as though he's speaking at a funeral for his current, limited self.

I held onto my bottle of IC Light and looked for his "tells." They were there: his slightly furrowed brow, rapid blinking and frequent swallows. He looks down a lot too, when he's upset.

"You've never moved anywhere before, except for moving in with me," I said.

He looked up, his eyes alighting on the slightly stained paint at the top of the kitchen walls.

"You know what I mean, Marky. It's not like I haven't thought about it before," Jim said, looking around as though guilty of something. "I've paid off my car, but what else can I say for myself? I've had the same haircut since we took that trip to Los Angeles."

"That was like, seven years ago."

"Exactly," he said, his eyes rolling off to the side. He looked out the window, as though he was waiting for someone to show up at it. "I just want to shake things up a bit."

I could see even then, that his act of moving out was like how getting in a fight works for me. It's like a reset button. We're similar that way, because when I aim to get in a fight, I aim to lose. _Jim,_ I thought, _is gonna lose this one. _I took a long drink from my beer, but kept my eyes on him, bent over his box. He was putting things away somewhat carelessly, and I knew that without my help, things would break en route. The little tea glasses from Turkey-by-way-of-Los Angeles, his one plate that he stole from his mom's cabinet and used compulsively. His Seinfeld mug. Jim looked up at me as though he was apologizing for something.

"I'll give you all of my half of the deposit," he said, "and you know I feel bad about leaving this place without having painted it once the whole time."

"Well keep your calendar open, Halpert. You never know when I just might blow this town." I set my beer down. "I'll go get some newspaper for those glasses."

Walking away, I tried to distance myself from the situation, from Jim, in order to figure out what was wrong with him. We had been living together for all of the five years that we had been out of our parents' houses. We've known each other since high school, when we were on JV basketball together. That was until he moved up to Varsity in junior year. We split ways for the rest of that, until I ran into him at college. He was recovering from torn ligaments, and had given up basketball. He gave up a lot of things in the years that followed, including any aspiration.

But, I wasn't really thinking about that when I got the newspaper for his packing. I thought, _He must be losing it, if he's transferring to Stamford, moving out mid-lease._ When I came back Jim was next to the window, spacing out. I watched him looking mournful for a second but he didn't notice me. So, I crumpled the newspapers to get his attention.

"Come on, let's go," I said. I meant business.

We took his car to the Hiding Place, which has been our haunt since we could first legally spend our paychecks there. He keeps his car really tidy. It's kind of crazy. I've never eaten or drank anything in it, even though he's never really asked me not to. Except for his fingers tapping the steering wheel, it was dead silent in there. He wasn't even playing sad Travis songs. I burst that vacuum.

"So when does your transfer go into effect?"

"On the twentieth."

A smile appeared on his face, and he looked like he was thinking about something else, rather than what was bringing him down. When we got to the Hiding Place, I slapped down my new credit card and started us off with the ancient whiskey. Danny had to dust off the bottle before he opened it. I asked him to serve us two rounds. At our table, I raised my glass, and enunciating each word like a stage actor, proposed a toast.

"Here's to moving on."

I watched Jim closely over my glass. He tossed the sipping whiskey back like water. It took him a bit to open his eyes, and when he did, they were a little wet. I took a little sip, and waited.

"You know, I'm gonna miss this place," he started, twisting the small glass between his palms. "Not just the Hiding Place, but our apartment, our stupid neighbors—especially the guy above us who is never _not_ watching television."

"Yeah, conspiracy guy. I'll never miss him. Do you remember when you were piss drunk and kept trying to open his door with your key?" I laughed.

Jim cracked a smile, his eyes brightening.

"He called the cops on me," he laughed out, but it sounded a little bit hurt. Like a punctured lung. I leaned over and grabbed his shoulder, and made him take the next drink. He was getting intoxicated, probably because he hadn't been eating much lately. I felt a tinge of guilt over forcing his hand. _Tough love,_ I thought. I still do. I ended up getting him to drink at least four cheap beers. He rambled about things vaguely, as he always does when it's work-related, until he suddenly started to make sense. That happened as he was working on beer four, when I tried to approach the subject of his unavailable crush, Pam the receptionist. He answered me with some bullshit about how he doesn't like to "hold on to things."

I reminded him that earlier, he had said the opposite. I usually let him get away with non sequiturs, but that would have gone against the point of the whole damn drunk fest.

"I don't believe you," was the thing I said that brought everything to a halt. He looked at me with bleary eyes, as though he was trying to see me through a haze. We stared each other down until he broke into a smile.

"You are so full of shit, Mark."

I shook my head in a way that I reserve for special occasions. I used it when I found out that he was dropping out of school, and when he dumped that fox Katy, for example. It means something to him.

"You don't know what you want now, and you're not going to know when you move to Stamford. It's just going to be you hoping for things to just… turn around."

His face dropped, and I could smell indignation seeping ot of his pores, creating an offensive smell, just like the whiskey.

"And how would you know?" he came back at me, "Like you have a clue. Like you've ever wanted to do anything other than the goddamned bank," he said, getting louder, "you _genius_. You fuckin' know-it-all genius."

Jim avoids fights and confrontations as much as possible. He can more than hold his own, if it's unavoidable, but he always tries to talk himself out of it. He can look like a nerd, sometimes. He and I have clashed before. Once. It was minor, and he was similarly under the influence. This time, I shot up out of my chair, soliciting him to throw me a punch. The chair fell over behind me, and I wasn't messing around. He was maybe a little too far gone to know what was going on. He had seen me do this so many times before. At the Hiding Place, even. Danny didn't care. After the first couple of shoves, he would just say a word, and I'd get my opponent to "take it outside." I tip Danny real well.

It took me longer than usual to get to the point where I could hit him for any convincing reason. I stepped up to him, my veins throbbing in my neck. I probably get red-faced too, when I get all crazy for a fight, but I've never stopped to check. He tried to walk away inside of two sentences, but I wouldn't let him. I pushed him all of the way out back with my words, my burning defamation of his unrequited love. His sorry pining self, it just bummed me out to see all of the time. This was it.

I hit him so hard in the jaw. My hand got crushed by it, his broad, cast iron jaw. I'm not nearly as large as him. That's one of the reasons that he made Varsity and I didn't, I think. One of the reasons. It goes against the nature of fighting to speak, but I did. I taunted him, shuffling through a Rolodex of possible reasons that he might be leaving. It wasn't pretty.

I wrote all of his flaws on his shirt, with my spit that sprayed out at him, laced with blood. I have a fight like this maybe once a year, but I've never been making a statement in the process. And Jim's always driven me home.

I won the fight, with the last statement I made before he gave me the knockout punch: "She's never gonna love you."

That was it. I woke up, and he was sitting next to me, leaning against the wall. His shoulders were slumped, his entire self covered in grimy alcohol sweat. His face spoke sobriety. He had an ice pack on my head, which he had rested upon one of his shoes.

"So you know what's going on then, do you?" Jim asked. It was more like a statement, a realization.

"Probably not," I said, licking my lips that were swollen and throbbing. I tried to smile, but it hurt too much. I knew that I would have to call in to work for a few days off.

His face was covered in shadow, but I was sure that I could see it, saline spilling out from his red, red eyes. He sniffled, brushed his arm against his nose. I could see that I had gone too far with him. That maybe we were both clueless, and scared.


End file.
